James DeWitt Yancey “came across like an angel on earth,” singer and songwriter Steve “Spacek” White told Fader magazine in 2006. Most people tend to speak of him this way. His contributions to music were indeed felt as angelic, no matter the alias—John Doe, MC Silk, Jay Dee, or J Dilla. But the James Yancey legacy is wide-ranging. What he contributed to the lives of others was duly as significant.